2014 is over and smart marketers know that they need to get ahead of the trends and anticipate relevant new products and services. If not, they will be devoured by their competitors.

Some of my marketing and brand forecasts heading into 2014, such as the sharp growth of the shared economy, came true sooner than expected: Airbnb is now valued more than $13 billion (vs Hyatt Hotels $9 billion) and Uber more than $18 billion. Other predictions, such as top brands’ push for being best in retail or the digital transformation, are under way and gain momentum by the day.

Now, let´s jointly look at what I think can be some of the most important focus areas of top brands in 2015:

Being Best in Focusing
Whenever I speak with chief marketing officers and marketing directors it becomes quickly obvious that many struggle with how to tackle digital marketing, how to develop a holistic content marketing strategy, and how to implement the tons of new ideas. As a consequence, in 2015 the best marketers will clean-up the house and focus on selected big bets. Major projects and concepts which fit best with their brand´s DNA and core values. Going Back to Basics will be a key trend in 2015: To re-evaluate the target audience, determine what works and what doesn’t, re-prioritize and be smart about resource allocation and investment.

Being Best in Shifting Marketing Investments into Mobile and Digital
In its most recent ad spending report, Zenith Optimedia reduced their 2015 marketing spend forecast by 0.4 points to a +5.3% growth; anticipating weaker growth for traditional media and for Europe and Japan. Strong digital media growth will be mostly fueld by mobile advertising which is expected to grow by an average of 51% a year between 2013 and 2016.

Being Best at Justifying Marketing ROI
Also in 2015 brands will have to challenge themselves on how to measure marketing ROI, how to maximize marketing impact in consumer and business-to-business settings, how to adopt best practices for customer lifecycle management, and how to implement state-of-the-art segmentation techniques. More than ever the challenge will be to measure the ROI of their investment in content marketing. Yesterday it was about fans and likes. Today it's about social reach and page views. And in 2015 it will be about attention, engagement, desire, and how these affect the company's sales and reputation. Leading brands will have the right software tools in place to plan and to track. You might want to check out e.g. Wingify´s A/B testing platform – called Visual Website Optimizer - which is for people even if they don’t have HTML or coding experience (like me).

Being Best at Meeting The Audience
Top brands constantly analyze the communities and geographies where their audience is. In most Western countries you would need to be in Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Depending on your business also in LinkedIN (a must channel for B2B marketing), Pinterest, and Youtube. In other countries, e.g. in China, sites and services like Sina Weibo, RenRen, or Pengyou should be covered. And yes, don´t worry too much about Google+ in 2015. In summary, don´t rush into every new social network. Instead find the right ones for you, i.e. evaluate carefully where your current and potential customers are and might go to. 

Therefore smart marketers will make sure to be in all relevant interest-based networks (as opposed to Facebook-style people-based networks). Depending on your product consider sites for cat lovers, for cooks and food lovers, or sites likeFitocrazy for fitness junkies. You could even build your own social network (possibly in cooperation with other companies), e.g. by using Tint which is a self-service platform that allows organizations to create social hubs in minutes. Tint aggregates, curates, and displays any social media feeds anywhere. According to Mary Meekerand her famous Internet Trend Reports the 4 Ps have been supplemented by the 3Cs: Content, community, commerce. 

The following rising social media sites and apps every top marketer should watch:Ello (the hippster social network which promised to never sell user data, currently still in Beta and invite-only), Yik Yak (exchanges fully anonymous posts with people who are physically nearby), Whisper, Bubbly, Heard, and WeChat. To find out more on how to grow your brand and your business via social media go ahead and read the social media industry report. 

Being Best at Saving Customers´ Time and Responding ASAP
Top brands and companies will offer more "order ahead“ functionalities and superefficient services allowing their customers to save time. In hotels e.g. many guests want to skip the front desk. Therefore an increasing number of hotels will introduce a digital check in allowing their guests to use their smartphone as the room key. Hyatt, Hilton, and Starwood hotels are already testing some of these services. Another example is Starbucks which announced that it will introduce for the first time Mobile Order and Pay in stores in 2015. This will enable customers to place orders in advance of their visit and pick them up at their selected Starbucks location. Imagine not having to wait any longer in-line for 15 minutes for your Caramel Machiatto!

Social media created a consumer with short-term thinking. And best marketers – with lots of data at their hands – are capable of faster adaption, shorter lead times, and real-time communication. Marketing champions will answer within an hour and not within a week or a day. In Edelman’s Brandshare study of 15,000 people worldwide the number one most important behaviour indicated was a brand’s ability to respond quickly to concerns and complaints; with 78% of consumers saying it’s important but only 17% feeling brands do this well. The gap is particularly pronounced in the areas people value most – responsiveness, involvement and conviction. 

Being Best at Addressing New Consumers Entering the Marketplace
The Millennial generation - aka Generation Y and with most researchers using birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the mid 1990s – according to a 2014 report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) chooses brands that are better aligned with their own morals and values. And because Millennials are social media and mobile users, the impact of their brand choices and feedback is greatly amplified and accelerated.

Then there is Gen Z. A name used for the cohort of people born after the Millennial Generation, i.e. born roughly between 1995 and 2010. They carry a large influence and buying power. Gen Z demands complete personalization, expects instantaneous validation, and looks for affirmation from their peers. For example national retailer Claire’s Inc. developed their Best Friends Forever (BFF) jewelry offerings, grew their social media databases, and engaged their “tween” girl target by appealing to Gen Z´s sense of creativity and individuality. Read the whole case study here.

Being Best at Generating Engagement and Creating Emotional Bonding
An excellent example is Nike´s Find Your Greatness campaign which touches all of us because it’s such a positive inclusive message. one of the campaign´s best commercials is The Jogger featuring 12-year-old Nathan from London, Ohio. Telling us that greatness is not beyond his reach, nor is it for any of us. It´s a memorable ad which reasonates with consumers as it delivers a personally meaningful message. It both links back to the brand´s values and at the same time it represents beliefs which go beyond the brand and its products. 

Top brands will use tools like Digital Platform GPS which can optimize placements and resolve issues related to native advertising and shorter consumer attention spans. Metrics will move away from counting the number of views, sharing, and likes, toward real engagement. Brand consultancies like Brandkeys have developed specialized systems that provide brands with predictive and strategic findings that can increase ROI, sales and profitability.

Also the ability to craft visual stories that inspire emotion and spark the movement will help companies get noticed and amplify their message. For example via Visual Storytelling. If you’re looking for a book that will give you inspiration for creating a visually based marketing campaign using a wide variety of social media platforms, then I recommend you the book The Power of Visual Storytelling by E. Walter and J. Gioglio. 

Being Best at Practicing a Human and Transparent Communication Style
Leading brands will interact with their audience with respect and not just post and think that´s it. They exchange with their customers in a consistent and regular manner, answer quickly and clearly their questions. These brands will give an accurate and real time picture of what they are doing in the interest of the consumer, at any given time. They define e.g. content marketing as not being advertising. They focus on building relationships in a simple and straightforward manner. Taking the Classroom to the Streets is an excellent example for such a campaign, even executed with a small budget. I also see more and more companies applying human and humorous elements. A good laugh or the vulnerability of silliness is a convincing way to earn trust and loyalty. Wren, a small L.A. clothing label , with "First Kiss" did a three-and-a-have-minute video showing strangers being asked to kiss on camera. Showing deep emotions and human vulnerability it was – and even if you did not like it – affecting, fascinating, and touching. And by the way, it got 5 million views in its first day, and has close to 100 million to date. 

Another good example: In honor of Earth Day on April 22, NASA has invited everyone to take part in a Global Selfie and submit a photo via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, and Google+. Finally an image was built using 36,422 individual photos.

Being Best at Caring in a Sincere Manner
Most of today´s consumers do not express their protests in the streets anymore. They´re voting for or against a brand at the check-out of both offline and online stores. In other words: Top brands will supplement their big and often anonymous Corporate Social Responsibility projects with more localized, individualized, and personalized initiatives. Marketers will need to keep adding “purpose” to their brands and products. In 2015 consumers want to balance more than ever consumption with ethical concerns. Initiatives like Small Business Saturday or Giving Tuesday as a natural corrective to Black Friday and Cyber Monday will gain further momentum.

Top brands will need to find a way to get involved now and not to be left out. They will need to support people to find their individual strengths, skills, and ways to improve their behaviour and way of life. Either by offering special services and trainings which go beyond the pure product or by granting personalized incentives or rewards that motivate customers to continue with their efforts. A good example is the Headspace meditation app. As a user you can map your journey, track your progress, and get rewards as you go. You can even buddy up with friends and motivate each other along the way. Foodtweeks is another superb example for combining business with supporting relevant causes. Every calorie you trim with Foodtweek will be donated to a local food bank and becomes a nutritious calorie for a hungry family. 

Being Best at Applying New Marketing Technologies
Too many companies think in terms of digital marketing. Instead, they should be thinking in terms of marketing in a digital world. The best marketers in 2015 will consider themselves also as marketing technologists. As someone with heavy digital acumen and a passion for technology, data, and analytics. Without doubt, 2015 will be the year digital measurement finally comes of age. Smart brands have already formalized their efforts across organizations as well as marketing and IT departments. You might want to check out the following course about strategic data-driven marketing. For additional good courses to acquire e.g. data science degrees for a fraction of cost of business schools have a look at these excellent MOOC(Massive Open online Courses) courses. 

Another very useful source of information can be found here. Companies like Google are also offering some helpful seminars and tools with its Analytics Academyor its Analytics Premium tool. The very best brands, however, will go beyond analytics in 2015 as they´ve understood that analyzing is only a descriptive exercise. Benchmarking is fundamental to understanding what’s happening today. But to outperform your competitors you need something that will help you produce the right content moving forward. These brands will use social media analytics and competitive intelligence platforms like Unmetric which are able to compile data in minutes, analyze marketing efforts and compare them against the competitors that matter. Armed with this information and specific data-driven creativity tools such marketers will be able to plan and create content that will set their brands apart. As a top-notch marketer you should also know Kenshoo which offers one of the most advanced predictive marketing softwares encompassing campaign creation, audience targeting, bidding and budgeting, measurement, training and support.

Being Best at Marketing New Consumer Technology
Visual communication will be a main trend in 2015. Just think Instagram or YouTube for videos. However, and what a surprise, YouTube is not the only traffic-generating place where you can upload your videos. I recommend also the following ones to upload and distribute your video content: Vimeo (fast growing!), Flickr (not only for still images), Break, Dailymotion, and Vine.

Another trend is the further rise of messaging apps. The most popular ones are:WhatsApp (still the dominant leader), Slack (very popular among young businesses), Snapchat (alhough there were privacy concerns), Kik (popular among teens), and Japanese Line (popular among celebs, allowing voice calls over the internet, etc.). 

Video blogs and videos will continue to gain significant more share versus print and text blogs. Already today more than 5,000 companies use e.g. Brightcove to publish and distribute online videos to websites, social networks, smartphones and tablets. 

Simple, clean, and single-purpose apps which are easy and fast to use will be another major trend to watch in 2015. Even Facebook looks to further unbundle its experience into single-use applications like messaging, photography, contact management, location services, etc. Foursquare has already broken itself up by having launched Swarm some months ago. Other multi-brand and multi-product companies should seriously think about how best to develop unique apps for each of them. Saying that, marketers must carefully review their core user base, analyze their behaviors, needs, and wants. And only then define their (mobile) app and content strategy: single-use app, multi-purpose apps, and/or hybrid apps.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), virtual reality, and wearables represent another three key technologies in 2015 for top brands to follow and possibly to shape. In regards of AI many leading brands – and not only the usual suspects like Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. - will take their first serious steps with machine learning and will invest in robotics. With giant eyes and a childlike face Softbank´s Pepper humanoid robot that can read and react to human emotions will help to sell Nescafe coffee in Japan. Also other companies e.g. in the hospitality industry will use cutting-edge technology to create unique guest experiences by offering drone delivery servicelike at the Casa Madrona hotel in Sausalito or the robot A.L.O. as a concierge at the Aloft Hotel in Cupertino, California. 

Even if in 2015 AI might be embraced only by the very elite of the top brands, progressive marketers should already now think about using tools which are powered by AI such as e.g. Conversica which is one of the very few automated software solutions that can contact, engage, nurture, qualify and follow-up with leads without the need for human interaction.

With developments such as a cardboard DIY headset from Google and theSamsung Gear VR coming soon, I expect that also virtual reality will get closer to the mainstream in 2015 than ever before.

Finally, wearables like fitness trackers (e.g. those from Jawbone and Fitbit), fitness-tracker and smartwatch hybrids like the Gear Fit and Microsoft Band, smartwatches like Samsung Gear S, Motorola Moto 360, Pebble, or the soon to come iWatch of Apple collect data and zapping it off wirelessly to the Internet and all major social networks. Regardless if it´s agood thing or not, it will happen and as a marketer you better know what to do about it.

Being Best at Offering Easy Mobile Payment Solutions
With Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and many more working on it the mobile wallet will get significant traction in 2015. In addition, there are other powerful new kids on the block which top marketers need to have on their radar; like Venmo,SinglePoint, Square or Level Up. Although at this stage the endgame isn’t exactly clear, for sure we will also see major social networks trying more aggressively to handle financial transactions in 2015. Click here to get the latest mobile payment influencer study.

Being Best at Embracing the Sharing Economy 
All leading and ambitious brands will need to be part of it. Full stop. Even, if it´s only to try it and to learn from their experiences to further develop their main products and offerings. The sharing economy has arrived in a big way and is here to stay. The internet of things will also become the internet of sharing things. Although in some countries some old-fashioned and backward looking politicians and lobbyists try to stop some Peer-to-Peer sites with sometimes obscure legal means, by now most of us have taken an Uber ride or stayed at an Airbnb place. 

In 2015 the sharing economy will enter the next level. First, existing players will diversify their offers. Ride-sharing service Lyft e.g. launched Lyft Line mid of 2014. Currently available in three US cities, users can share a ride with others going the same way, and pay up to 60% less. There will be a national roll out during 2015. Second, third party companies like Breeze – only founded in 2014 and backed byMarc Cuban – will build an ecosystem around existing sharing economy companies. Breeze e.g. offers customers flexible access to vehicles they can use to support jobs as drivers for Uber, Lyft, etc. Denver-based Evolve is doing something similar by offering marketing and booking services for homeowners and offering travelers a simple booking experience. Third, the sharing economy will spread into all areas of life. Think of companies like Simplist which helps you find experts across all of your networks. And fourth, it is expected that membership and subscription models will continue to grow in 2015 such as book subscription services like Kindle Unlimited,Scribd, Oyster or video streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Google Play, etc. To get more info, data, case studies, etc. on the pulse of Mesh and the sharing economy click here. 

Being Best at Data Security
Remember Target, Home Depot, eBay, Sony... All of them – and many more companies – were hacked. Customer data is a key asset for both companies and for their customers. Unfortunately, still too many companies are treating customer data with woefully inadequate protections. As "The Internet of All Things" matures, consumers will expect greater security. The time is now to apply a strict security strategy and to to have contingency plans in place. Moreover there is a severe need to cooperate e.g. with specialized companies like Security Scorecard which provide insights into the security posture and key risks of a company and its business partners to proactively tackle cybercriminals.

Being Best at Setting up own in-house Incubator and Accelerator ProgramsAlready in 2010 Pepsi launched PepsiCo10 an incubator program that matches technology, media and communications entrepreneurs with PepsiCo brands for pilot programs. Other leading brands like Coca-Cola, Disney, Siemens, etc. followed. In the majority of cases, however, these models use the traditional principle that the sponsoring company provides expertise and guidance and allow the emerging new venture to create and develop its own brands and products. In 2015, however, top brands will start to run in-house incubators of "start-ups“ to assist with the development of new products and services which are at the core of their businesses; instead of just considering a "start-up“ as an opportunity to develop new technologies or improved processes. Also small companies which are tied down by a shoestring budget can use sophisticated software programs and services like HubSpot´s Jumpstart to build or expand their online business in an incubator-style. Jumpstart gives you 30+ marketing tools starting at €64 per month.

Being Best at Internal Communications
In 2015 top brands and companies will focus more than ever on internal communications as a marketing asset. They will communicate frequently and broadly with all key stakeholders to explain the brand´s vision, ambitions, and strategy. The more innovative, dynamic, and disruptive they are, the more they need to get employees, suppliers, and partners involved and engaged. The very best brands will create brand ambassador programs centered around their own employees or customers. By assessing a company’s core values and cultivating a workforce that lives up to those values, these brands create a culture that promotes loyalty, strong customer service, and fun. one of my favorite examples is Zapposwhich is magnificent at giving its employees freedom to develop and to act as an ambassador e.g. by talking on behalf of Zappos in front of customers, key vendors or industry events.

Being Best at Building A Brand Ecosystem
In the age of mobile content consumption people no longer simply "listen“ and "read." They "monitor" and "scan." They make a decision in the blink of a moment as to how valuable a piece of content is, how much time they should give to it, and ultimately whether they buy a product or not. As a result, an organization must craft user experiences that befit the environment in which readers will discover, read, and share. Best brands will continue to create a common brand experience across the digital experience on- and offline. Building a meaningful community, i.e. an ecosystem around the brand. Crafting the right pathway to the product or service that a specific user needs and wants. A good example is the MINI - Chase The Paceman campaign which ran in the UK this year.

Being Best at Morphing Departments 
The markets are turning more complex. Top companies and brands will push hard to continue overcoming functional borders within their organizations. They will break up traditional silos and insist on bringing people together from various departments. They will morphe the marketing and sales function into one as both are the critical customer-facing departments. The CMO will have to apply a holistic and integrating mindset and to convince her teams, peers, and CEO for support such an approach. All in order to improve and exceed at serving the customers. As expressed by Doug Warner from the opposite perspective: "In the world of Internet Customer Service, it´s important to remember your competitor is only one mouse click away.“

Being Best at Keeping and Recruiting Top Talents
Big corporations will face more trouble than ever retaining and finding top marketing talents. Increasingly those will reject corporate treadmill careers and instead prefer becoming their own and independent boss via feelancing, partnering with creative boutique agencies, or working for crowdsource brand-building platforms likeColossal Spark or eyeka. 

Final Thoughts

In the end it’s still the brand that matters. Also in 2015, and facing a more competitive environmnet than ever with highly demanding and sophisticated consumers, brands will need to continue to differentiate themselves and to clearly stand for something relevant, emotional, and meaningful to consumers.

There is no reason to wait only for top brands to make this happen. Neither now nor in 2015. Every marketer can take over ownership, pay attention to what looms ahead, plan early her moves, put herself into the driver seat, and make it happen. 

What do you think? Which marketing trends do you see for 2015? What will the best companies and brands do in your opinion?

Please join the discussion by leaving a comment below!

Best regards,

Andreas von der Heydt